So when I first heard about the anthology that Cool Skull Press was putting out an anthology of video game poems, all written by women and non-binary authors, I was so in. Except I missed the deadline. And then they emailed me and were all like “can you send us some things?” and I was all like “YAAASSSS” (except, you know, super professional) and now I get to say that I’m in GODDESSMODE, which is so very excellent (I’ve seen the insides and everything) and I absolutely cannot wait for everyone else to get their hands on it. Meanwhile, I thought I’d check in with August Smith over at Cool Skull Press to see how this fantastic anthology came about. Here’s our interview.

E. Kristin Anderson: What attracts you to video games as a subject for poetry? This isn’t Cool Skull Press’ first video game poetry book.

August Smith: That’s a difficult question because I feel like the answer is very nebulous. I can pick out a few standout reasons, though. On one level, it’s really just a form of nostalgia-mining for me. I get to revisit these characters, words, landscapes, and ideas that I spent a lot of with as a child, and somehow I find that pleasurable and emotionally resonant. I think the impulse is similar to the impulse behind people writing fanfiction– there’s something powerful in taking these expansive fictional universes that are outside of my control and modding them in any way I like. And readers that were raised on these games have an easy emotional access point with my video game work. I received so many emails from people who were excited about my MARIO KART 64 chapbook because they used to spend hours playing it with their siblings so many years ago. There is an emotional connection to these games and it’s not superficial.

It’s really really really hot which is maybe why I haven’t written this blog post yet.

But I have news. I’ll start you off with Silver Birch Press’ THE GREAT GATSBY ANTHOLOGY, which just came out. I have an erasure poem in the book, and there are TONS of awesome authors in here. Seriously, tons. It’s stupid. Go grab a copy!

And then I had a piece up at Juked online, which was pretty great. It’s an erasure from my manuscript PAUSE FOR AN EPIPHANY (which I’m currently sending out to publishers, huzzah!) and it’s one of my favorites — “If we had a nickel.” I used a piece from Allure to write this one. Allure has so many wonderful words in its pages.

If someone only knew when I was twelve years-old, I saw myself reflected for the first time in the characters of THE OUTSIDERS. If someone only knew how I hungered to see more of myself in the books I was reading. Where were the Mexican-American and mixed race kids? Where were the bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning kids? Where were the gender-fluid, tomboy, popular-geek kids?

Where were the kids like me?

The kids who grew up in homes that seemed solid from the street, whose lives behind pulled curtains and locked doors were a volatile and cruel place. Where self-harm became a coping mechanism. Where the struggle of being unseen, even when everyone was looking, felt paralyzing.

Where were the characters in books to reflect the challenges of my emerging sexual identity? To mirror a truth similar to mine while living in a town of 5,036 plus two stray dogs and a Pizza Hut. The restaurant we drove in circles around Friday nights after football games. Girls hanging out the back of truck beds. Guys cruising in their parents’ Buick or mini-van (the latter would never be cool).

Where I live that means it’s unbearably hot—not sidewalks-are-melting hot, but at-least-two-electric-fans-must-be-blowing-on-me-to-get-any-sleep hot. Movie theatres are full of kids even for the matinees. Most of my regular tv programs are on hiatus and I’m stuck with secondary summer fare and CBS’s abomination (or is it ‘epitome of the reality television genre’?) Big Brother. Oh, and right there at the end of the month is my sister’s birthday, reminding me, as my own birthday did six months earlier, that we’re not getting any younger.

I’m a bit embarrassed to admit that for the past several years it’s taken someone reminding me to recognize it’s also Pride month. Partly that’s because I live in a small central valley town in California. No one here celebrates Pride in any manner that doesn’t involve at least 45 minutes of drive time. Our local PBS station, KVIE, does run the occasional LGBT-themed program, but if they run it with fanfare, I somehow manage to miss it. But mostly I forget because I’m old—not ‘senior-moment’ old, but…Well, I forget.

I once overheard someone say that Pride Week was a giant party and why wasn’t there a party for them (heterosexuals). It may look like a party—we certainly work hard at celebrating and connecting with friends and loved ones, and at being proud of who we are—but many of us in the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Trans, Queer/Questioning) community have faced homophobia, harassment, hatred, hate violence, and some have even been murdered. It can be a struggle to be who we are in the face of hate and discrimination. It gets even harder when we are isolated or lack support, and especially for teens who may lack community and resources.

Many LGBTQ teens are afraid to come out to their families or friends because they may be bullied, attacked, kicked out of their families and homes, or killed. Even in the US, Canada, and the UK, there are still queer youth (and adults) who are stalked, bullied, harassed, beaten, raped, and/or murdered for who we are and who we love. (http://76crimes.com/100s-die-in-homophobic-anti-gay-attacks-statistics-updates/ and http://www.avp.org/storage/documents/Reports/2014_HV_Report-Final.pdf) In at least seventy countries, it’s still a crime to be gay. (http://76crimes.com/76-countries-where-homosexuality-is-illegal/) Just being a teen is hard enough, with the social pressures to conform and to be liked, never mind the added pain if you’ve experienced bullying or abuse. Add in homophobia, and it’s no wonder that LGB youth are four times as likely to try to kill themselves. (http://www.thetrevorproject.org/pages/facts-about-suicide)

I had the great pleasure recently of teaching my debut novel, THE REVELATION OF BEATRICE DARBY, in the alternative high school where I’ve taught English literature and creative writing for nine years—great pleasure and great fortune. After all, coming of age lesbian romance fiction isn’t part of most high school curriculums. So yes, I’m fortunate to work here for many reasons.

The one that stands out every June is the fact that I’m allowed to be myself among faculty, staff, and students, a luxury indeed as LGBT teachers in many parts of the country still can’t imagine what’s like to be open at work. But it wasn’t always like this. I carried a lot of left-over baggage about revealing that part of my identity when I began teaching as a second career in 2006. Bush was still president, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was alive and well, and so was the Defense of Marriage Act, so I had to be practical about it. Back in the 80s, I’d gone to heroic lengths during my four years of high school to conceal my secret identity from my classmates, well aware I’d be the target of ridicule and rejection if they’d ever found out. The idea of being the target of teenage scorn wasn’t any more appealing to me at thirty-seven than it was when they were my peers.

When I wrote HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES in 1988, I never dreamed it would be deemed a “classic” 25 years later. I never dreamed it would be banned, burned, defecated on, and read into the Congressional Record. I never dreamed it would be parodied by Jon Stewart, Conan O’Brien, and Bill Maher on national TV. Heck, I didn’t even think the story would ever see the light of day.

The book wasn’t even my idea. The book would never have been created if not for a chance encounter. In 1988, I was walking down the street in Northampton, MA, which the National Enquirer had recently dubbed “Lesbianville, USA,” when an acquaintance stopped me on the street and told me she did not have a book to read to her daughter that showed a family like hers—a little girl with two moms—and that somebody should write one. She looked me straight in the eye, and I knew by somebody she didn’t mean anybody. She meant me.

Always one to appreciate a writing challenge, I immediately rolled up my sleeves and got to work. How hard could it be? Children’s books don’t even have a lot of words, I thought foolishly. Now when I think back, I’m reminded of a quote by Mark Twain. The story goes that an editor asked him for a three-page essay. He sent a telegram: “Need 100 pages? Give me 3 days. Need 3 pages? Give me 100 days.” In other words, writing children’s books may look simple, but it isn’t easy.

So recently I was chatting with poetry friends about rejection, and when to give up on a poem. We were asking each other things like “when do you give up on submission?” Or “how many rejections does it take for you to know a poem just isn’t good enough?” I don’t know that there’s a specific number. So my answer is somewhere between “NEVAAAAAARRRRR!” and “Usually I get sick of the poem and realize it’s terrible before the number of rejections affects my willingness to send it out.” Given, I’m a bit of an egomaniac, but I maintain that all artists need delusions of grandeur on some level in order to function.

So there’s that. But I can give you some numbers. Because I’ve been doing this for a while and I’m still getting like 5-10 rejections a week because I do send out and I’m pretty sure that getting rejected is my job. Like, ratio of rejections to acceptances? Intensely on the R side. And those no’s sting. I’m not numb to it. And neither are you, probably.

It’s very exciting for me today to have Amanda Hocking on the blog for 7Q+1! She’s the sweetheart of self publishing and a prolific author, now publishing both traditionally and on her own. Check out her wonderful writerly insights below!

E. Kristin Anderson: What was the first spark of inspiration for your latest novel?

Amanda Hocking: Since it’s a spinoff series, the very initial spark began six years ago, when I was driving through the bluffs along the Mississippi River, and I thought, “I bet something magical could be happening up there, and we wouldn’t even know it.”

For this particular book – the second in a trilogy – the first scene I saw clearly in the book was the last scene of the book, but I don’t want to spoil that for you.

Over the past several weeks I’ve received contributors copies of some really fantastic magazines. I’m so proud to have my work in current issues of Hotel Amerika, Fourteen Hills (for the second time — they first published me in 2007!), and Orbis Quarterly (also a second time — they first published me in 2010) — and to be printed alongside some really wonderful writers and artists! I hope you’ll consider buying an issue and supporting these wonderful publications!

E. Kristin Anderson is a Pushcart-nominated poet and author who grew up in Westbrook, Maine and is a graduate of Connecticut College. She has a fancy diploma that says “B.A. in Classics,” which makes her sound smart but has not helped her get any jobs in Ancient Rome. Once upon a time she worked for the lovely folks at The New Yorker magazine, but she soon packed her bags and moved to Texas. Currently living in Austin, Texas, Kristin is an online editor at Hunger Mountain and a contributing editor at Found Poetry Review. Kristin is the co-editor of the DEAR TEEN ME anthology (Zest Books, 2012), based on the website of the same name. As a poet she has been published in many magazines including Post Road, [PANK], Asimov’s Science Fiction, Hotel Amerika, Raleigh Review and Cicada and she has work forthcoming in Juked and Contemporary Verse 2. Kristin is the author of four chapbooks of poetry: A GUIDE FOR THE PRACTICAL ABDUCTEE (Red Bird Chapbooks, 2014), A JAB OF DEEP URGENCY (Finishing Line Press, 2014), PRAY, PRAY, PRAY: Poems I wrote to Prince in the middle of the night (forthcoming from Porkbelly Press), and ACOUSTIC BATTERY LIFE (forthcoming from ELJ Publications). She hand-wrote her first trunk book at sixteen. It was about the band Hanson and may or may not still be in a notebook in her parents’ garage. She blogs at EKristinAnderson.com and is currently working on a full-length collection of erasure poems from women’s and teen magazines.